Hands of Time
by Duesal10
Summary: The creation of an ascended being puts a strain on reality. A little too much effort on his part or even just a slight loss of control may very well result in a tear—a warping of time and space itself. Unfortunately, Naruto and Sasuke have to pay the consequences. Time-Travel. Warring Clans Era. No Yaoi. No Bashing.
1. To Change the Past

**Author's Note: **_So... it's come to my attention that so far my first story,_ The Clan Wars_,__ consists of a 100-page prologue... Frankly, it ticks me off that I dragged I things out for that long. __This is my attempt at redemption. Now, seeing as the Sage of Six Paths was the main reason for a 100-page prologue, he will never be mentioned this time around. _:D

_Now, for those of you who actually liked The Clan Wars, don't panic. I'll be continuing that story as well, in sync with this one. They'll be like AU's of each other, the same events playing out differently until they are unrecognizable. Don't worry, it'll only be the major events. The smaller, everyday stuff will be completely different with new people._

_So this version starts from Manga Chapter 639, just 'cause the Obito-Jinchuuriki scenes are so damn cool._

* * *

**Hands of Time**

Prologue: To Change the Past

~o0O0o~

In what was once a great forest, a monstrous battle ravaged the landscape, turning the former homes of birds and beasts alike into a desolate wasteland. Titanic craters littered the area, as did the bodies of thousands of shinobi, but it was the living that truly marked the place. It was the men and women whose chakra raged like a thunderstorm that marked the wasteland as something more than barren rock and dust.

It was also where one man became a god. Unstoppable.

**_BAM!_**

Obito's black tailed-beast-bomb stretched from his hand like a spear and blasted clean through the skeletal arm of Sasuke's Susano'o, practically dematerializing the ethereal armor. Off balance from his redirected attack, Obito took a moment to steady himself, glaring at his fellow Uchiha all the while. His demonic body rippled with unbreakable grey scales and his mismatched eyes glowed with a monstrous rage, rage that he had been denied.

The mysterious thing was that the newest Jinchuuriki's body was mismatched, right down the middle. Obito's left side, the side of his body which held the Rinnegan, was almost completely human, with the exception being the compressed tailed-beast-bomb that hovered behind his hand and the spikes which sprouted from his upper and lower back. The right side of his body was another matter entirely.

For one thing, Obito's right half was completely covered in blank grey scales, as though the Sharingan hadn't had nearly enough power to suppress the beast as the Rinnegan did. The unbreakable reptilian scales covered him from his bare feet right up to his hairline, evidence that the Juubi's influence would not be completely contained with anything less than the ripple-eyes. As it was, Obito's hair had transformed from the standard Uchiha black to a startling bone-white, yet more proof of the monster trapped inside him. The cursed eye for his demon half and the eyes of creation for his human half...

On the jinchuuriki's back was a total of ten long, bone-white spikes, five at the top just below the junctions of his shoulders, and five at the bottom along the small of his back. Situated right between his shoulder blades rested the eeriest symbol of the a large magatama with a Rinnegan in its head, which presided above nine smaller magatamas, all of which were in rows of three.. Nine tailed beasts under one greater than them all...

Naruto, whom Obito had been about to skewer with what was undoubtably a one-shot kill technique, stared at Sasuke in shock, his fluctuating chakra cloak betraying his confusion. Had Sasuke really just saved him?

But Sasuke ignored Naruto, instead standing slightly in front of the blond as he landed safely on the ground, his Susano'o still encasing his body. The purple shroud of otherworldly power writhed in response to Obito's violent attack, hurriedly repairing damage to the Sasuno'o's arm.

_'Sasuke...' _Naruto thought, unable to really think of anything else in his dire situation.

Pictures of his genin days flashed before Sasuke's eyes. Naruto, the loudmouthed idiot who could never do anything right, Sakura, the useless fangirl who had no ambition, and finally, Kakashi, the man who opened the way to his greatest techniques by teaching him the Chidori... He had left them all behind so long ago, but now... now they were here... Now they were strong...

But that didn't mean that he would let _them_ change the fate of this world. He had already decided to change it, as was his duty as the last untainted Uchiha.

"Not you..." he said. Naruto and Obito looked on in confusion, not entirely understanding what he meant. The wind suddenly blew with a vengeance, picking up dirt and debris wherever it could in that barren wasteland that was the final battlefield.

Sasuke looked up, his Mangekyō glaring out from the shadows of his eyes. In his mind, Naruto's image in their Team Seven picture was suddenly slashed in two, eradicating the blond from his mindscape.

"_I_... will _erase the past!_" the Uchiha declared grimly, his Susano'o's skeletal right arm brandishing its black sword of flames menacingly. Naruto stiffened as he remembered Sasuke saying something similar when they both combined their most powerful attacks against the Juubi. Sasuke wanted to change the shinobi system. He wanted to destroy the bijuu... But Naruto didn't have enough time to tell Sasuke to take a hike.

As though he were completely dismissing Sasuke, Obito's singular Rinnegan pulsed with a terrifying power. Naruto and Sasuke froze, and the very air around Obito's eye rippled with a devastating force. Against this sheer might, no one would survive. No one _could_ survive...

_**BAM!**_

Obito appeared in front of Sasuke and Naruto like he had been there the whole time in a show of supersonic speed. Obito's only human hand clamped down on Sasuke's face with lightning-fast speed, slowly crushing his skull and blocking his already dimming vision. He didn't stand a chance. The last thing he was aware of was Naruto, right next to him, his face being crushed by Obito's monstrously scaled right hand.

Off to the side, Minato screamed out his fury as the tailed-beast-bombs hovering behind Obito's hands suddenly changed shape and shot at the two captive teens.

There was an explosion, that much Sasuke had realized. Then he knew no more, and his awareness drifted in the darkness.

* * *

**Author's Note****: **_What'd ya think? I like it a lot more than my _Clan Wars_ prologue. Then again, I have a feeling that just about everything about this story is going to be better than its predecessor. Characters, plot, setting, interactions, fight scenes, you name it!_

_Anyway, R&R! Until next time!_


	2. Blown Away

**Author's Note****: **_A huge thanks to all of you who favorited, followed, and reviewed this story. I'm blown away by the magnitude of attention that 1K words is receiving. On another note, for everyone who thought the prologue was too short, I've added more. It's a bit more substantial now than when I first published._

_In other news, I officially have a beta for grammar! **sendicard**_

_Just check out his profile, this guy is so incredibly intelligent._

_Anyway, to the reviewers of the prologue, even though it was just a prologue: Thanks! I really appreciate the fact that you take the time to write your thoughts down. Thank you: **Infamous Storm, Taijen, Guest, WRose, E3-FantasyandReality, Battle neurosis, Twisted-Vampire Knight-Red, He-Who-Shall-Live, yo, Mr. T, Lazybozo555, MBScavenger1498, Grace of Hearts, AmandaSingh0, LimitedEternity, Analon, shadowmarialove, My God Can Beat Up Your God, uchihatetsu, , LeisaTheGreat, sendicard, Kyong Kybis, xdevil-childx, Zaxxon, imsabbel, KARAKI TAKAN,** and **10th Sqaud 3rd Seat**_

_"Change is impossible in this fog of ignorance."_

— Itachi Uchiha

~o0O0o~

**Hands of Time**

Chapter 1: Blown Away

~o0O0o~

* * *

_"He wanted to die as a criminal and a traitor._

_He accepted disgrace in the place of honor,_

_and hate in the place of love._

_Despite all that, Itachi died with a smile on his face,_

_for the peace of the Hidden Leaf Village, and most of all, for Uchiha Sasuke."_

_'Nii-san...'_

Suddenly, Sasuke was taken from the numbing darkness and thrust back into Konoha, looking through the eyes of his six-year-old self, feeling everything all over again, thinking every past thought once more. He was reliving his life before the annihilation of his clan, before the Uchiha massacre...

* * *

~o0O0o~

It was a beautiful sunset, a grand burst of orange, red, and gold. Crickets chirped in the summer breeze.

"Father only talks about you," a six-year-old Sasuke complained to his older brother, both of whom were relaxing on their porch with their legs swinging down to the yard. Lately, it seemed as if nothing that Sasuke did was good enough. He still couldn't throw all of his shuriken dead-center, his Grand Fireball Jutsu used too much chakra, and he hadn't yet awakened his Sharingan; Itachi had encountered no such obstacles at the same age.

Uchiha Itachi was the Uchiha clan's greatest prodigy; he was super-strong and had everyone's respect, even father's! Father's respect was something that Sasuke had been trying to get for years, and the fact that Itachi was able to captivate the man with barely any effort at all was more than a little irksome for the high-pitched Academy student.

His elder brother seemed like an impossible ideal at times, always a million steps ahead. Sasuke was beginning to wonder if he would ever catch up.

Itachi was silent for a moment before he looked up, staring off into the glory of the sun. "Surely you must hate me," he finally said.

Sasuke gaped like a fish. How could he ever hate his nii-san?! Sure he was jealous, but he didn't _hate_ him! The child stared at Itachi wide-eyed, slightly caught off guard by his brother's blunt accusation.

"That's okay," the Leaf shinobi finally said in a tranquil voice after a long, uncomfortable silence, as though he was prepared for his little brother's undying hatred and fury. "I'm always going to be there for you, even if it's only as an obstacle for you to overcome, even if you do hate me. That's what big brothers are for."

Sasuke was dumbstruck. His nii-san had _expected_ him to hate him... The little boy didn't understand why his elder brother was acting so depressed lately, like the entire world had turned against him. He was a super-strong shinobi who had the respect and admiration of everyone in the village! That was the reason why Sasuke wanted to be just like his big brother, a strong ninja that would make his clan proud.

But was was his brother so gloomy? After spending a few moments deep in thought, thinking as hard as any six-year-old could, Sasuke dismissed the notion. Someone as awesome as his nii-san would never be depressed! He was too cool for that kind of stuff!

* * *

~o0O0o~

_"How's he holding up?" Hikari Senju looked up in the direction of the baritone voice behind her, only to find the tall, wide-shouldered, muscular form of her younger brother, Masaru, conveniently blocking the torchlight. His wild dark brown hair was dampened from the rain she could hear pattering outside and his emerald eyes shone with mischief. She growled and swatted playfully at his muscular arm. _

_"Move, you big oaf! You're blocking the light!" Masaru just chuckled at the light, clear voice, but did as his small-statured sister commanded. His grin vanished the moment he looked past her to the dark-haired, pale-skinned man she was caring for: the Uchiha bastard. His sister tracked his gaze, then looked up at him with tender amber eyes. _

_She really was a beautiful woman, with long lustrous brown hair tied up in a ponytail, a small delicate nose, and porcelain skin. Her eyes were large, round pools of innocence which could melt any man, aside from him of course, and her figure was divine, honed through years of harsh training. In another world, Masaru liked to believe that his sister would have been born a princess rather than a shinobi, with a castle to live in and servants to wait on her hand and foot. It was rather unfortunate that she had been born with the naivety of one... To actually care for the life of an Uchiha!_

_But at the moment, the dark-haired man was harmless to them. His arms were littered with cuts to the point where they would take months to heal, he had severe burns on his abdomen, and his right femur had been snapped cleanly in half, not to mention dozens of other bones that had bee fractured. That guy looked like he'd been through hell, and when he woke up, he'd probably feel like it too._

_"You know we can't trust him," Masaru warned, making sure that his sister looked him in the eye before he continued, "They're like snakes. As soon as he finds out we're Senju, he's going to try to kill us, regardless of the fact that you've saved his life."_

_The light in the woman's eyes dimmed a little as she looked at the unconscious Uchiha, who was only perhaps a year her senior. She looked away and sighed in defeat, "I know, little brother. I know..."_

* * *

~o0O0o~

A few days later, it was a bright midday in Konoha, and Itachi was carrying Sasuke on his back on a walk through their village.

"Nii-san, will you train with me again?" Sasuke pleaded from his position on his brother's back. He just _knew_ that if someone as awesome as his nii-san trained him, he couldn't help but be awesome too!

Not stopping in his trek, Itachi closed his eyes. "Yes." Sasuke's heart soared with hope.

"But I've been assigned to missions starting tomorrow." The little boy couldn't quell his growing disappointment, evident by his pouting face.

"You will be attending the Ninja Academy," Itachi explained, trying to ease his little brother's sense of abandonment. It worked a bit, as Sasuke's pout vanished from his face and he looked over Itachi's shoulder with a thoughtful expression.

They were approaching the Uchiha Clan Compound. "That's alright," Sasuke decided. "As long as you can stay with me once in a while." Itachi couldn't help but smile at his little brother's innocent declaration.

But after that day, Itachi stopped playing with Sasuke completely. It was always 'mission this' or 'mission that', and he wouldn't stop leading him on with promises of training before poking him in the forehead! It was embarrassing for Sasuke to be caught off guard like that _every time_.

He never noticed Itachi's sorrowful look of apology every time he stormed away. He never noticed that his brother was a man falling apart at the seams with stress and worry. He never knew...

* * *

~o0O0o~

_Masaru rushed into the hidden cave where his sister had been watching over the Uchiha. He'd been out gathering some food from the surrounding forest, but his blood froze when he heard her scream._

_He bolted in, bristling with kunai, ready to turn everything aside from his sister into metallic porcupines. Finally reaching the cavern which held his sister and the Uchiha, he raced forward and brushed aside the worn deer pelt that marked the entrance to the room, multiple kunai in each hand ready to be thrown. His jaw dropped at the sight of his sister tightly securing the Uchiha's wrists to the bedpost, her eyes smoldering with a new kind of fury._

_"N-Nee-chan?" The young woman sharply turned towards her brother, her long brown ponytail whipping out behind her and slapping the Uchiha bastard across the face. Masaru would have grinned if Hikari hadn't been looking at him like he was a criminal._

_"He touched me!" she hissed, her face bright red. "He said, 'Come train with me' in his sleep, and then he groped me!" She pointed furiously to her rather generous chest, which was clearly defined through her form-fitting black leather bodysuit, a rather unique armor that she had designed for herself back home._

_Masaru blanched and wisely said nothing, allowing his sister to continue to bind the Uchiha. He liked this way better anyway..._

_Off to the side, the Uchiha murmured in his sleep, "So soft..."_

_Masaru paled and made a beeline for the exit while Hikari turned bright red._

_"PERVERT!" she screamed, her voice echoing loudly through the cavern._

* * *

~o0O0o~

More than a month later, the full moon dominated the night sky, obscuring all but the brightest of stars and showering everything with its pale ghostly light. The Uchiha Clan Compound was deathly quiet as a little Sasuke breathlessly ran home from another hard day of training.

_'I've stayed out for a while,'_ he thought to himself, but he wasn't contrite. Not in the least.

His mind was too preoccupied with how he could beat his nii-san to notice that none of the street lanterns were lit. No one was outside like they usually were... The clan head's second son suddenly froze mid-step as the air around him thickened.

**Tha-_thump!_**

His heart hammered in his chest, like it was trying to break free of his ribcage, and all the while, Sasuke felt like something was hunting him. He had felt this before in the most miniscule amounts once before when he had snuck onto the Uchiha Clan training grounds to watch the jōnin fight, but now it was so much stronger.

This was sakki, killing-intent at its finest.

Unnoticed by his little brother, Itachi crouched high up on top of a post in full ANBU regalia, his katana strapped to his back and his Sharingan glowing red in the night. The moon loomed huge and ominous behind him, uncaring to the affairs of mortals, no matter how bloody and violent.

Sasuke stood shock-still for a moment. Something was wrong... Something was _very_ wrong... He looked up to the post where that awful, foreboding sensation had emanated, but it was empty...

_'What was that? I thought someone was there...'_

Then his eyes widened in shock and apprehension and he inhaled sharply as he finally noticed the dark and silent street. His normally invisible pupils showed clearly as he stood there open-mouthed and more than a little uneasy.

_'No lights? It's not so late that people would be asleep already...'_

He immediately bolted into his clan compound, terrified at what he would find waiting for him. The six-year-old sharply turned a corner and slid to a stop, his ninja-sandals kicking up dust in his wake.

_'This is—!'_

He trembled at the sight of the ravaged street. Lanterns that once glowed with a soft, gentle light had been brutally slashed in half, right through the Uchiha Clan insignia. The clan flags bearing the Uchiha fan that proudly flew over the streets of the compound were now torn, cut into ribbons by the kunai and shuriken that peppered the walls in a deadly hail of shinobi steel.

Blood was everywhere... Pooling on the ground, sprayed in the walls, slowly draining from the people... Oh god, the people!

The still-warm bodies of shinobi and civilians alike littered the street, their lifeblood rapidly fleeing from their decaying forms. Everything was red... A kunai was imbedded in one shinobi's back, a shuriken through another shinobi's eye. One after another, they had all been expertly killed, despite their status as ninja of the Hidden Leaf, despite their inherent skill as members of the great Uchiha clan.

The civilians all had gaping cuts through their midsections, as if the attacker hadn't wanted to waste his precious kunai and shuriken on people who couldn't even fight back. Six people, all of whom Sasuke knew by name, laid dead on the street, their eyes still wide open and fearful. They were _dead!_

_'What is this?'_ the Academy student questioned, utterly incapable of handling the harsh reality that had been shoved into his face, turning away from the fact that he had _known _these people, that they were all his _family._

He abandoned the lifeless husks that were once his fellow clan members, weaving through them as fast as he could, using his training for all it was worth. As he ran, he saw more and more people, all lying lifelessly on the ground, on the roof... This was a place of the dead...

_'What's going on?!' _he screamed out in his head as he raced towards his house, not once finding a street clear of corpses.

Then he abruptly came to a halt as he stumbled upon the bodies of two elderly figures whom he had been particularly fond of. He approached them with an overwhelming horror weighing down on his soul, clawing at his sanity.

_'Uncle... Auntie Shizu...'_

His uncle and aunt were dead, brutally slaughtered just like everyone else... High above, the moon pulsed with a pale ghostly light, giving the compound an otherworldly feel, as if the spirits of the dead had already claimed the land.

Sasuke's head snapped up in a dreadful apprehension, his dread clearly visible in his obsidian eyes.

_'Father! Mother!'_

Sasuke turned and ran faster than he had ever run in his life, his heartbeat dominating his senses as he fled to his house. He never once looked back...

When he finally reach his house after passing through street after street of the dead, the little boy slammed the wooden sliding-door that guarded his house to the side with a sharp bang. He paused uncertainly, fearfully. His house was as dark and foreboding as everywhere else... No lights lit the rooms, no one walked the halls... It was void of all life.

"Father? Mother?" he called out quietly to the darkness, far too terrified by everything he had seen outside to make his voice any louder.

He slowly walked inside and took off his shoes at the mat which marked the entrance to the living quarters of the house, subconsciously keeping to his daily routine as he entered his home: as though if he acted normal, then everything would _be_ normal.

"Are you here?" He slung off his bag and set it against the wall as he made his way up a few steps before making his way into his dark and silent home. The first room he passed was empty aside from a few coats, completely undisturbed by the violence outside. Sasuke took a deep, shuddery breath and moved on, being as brave as any six-year-old could be.

He slowly trudged deeper into his house, every step steadily increasing the pounding of his heart until the beat dominated his senses. He stepped into another room, this one with a television set sitting on a cabinet as well as a Japanese-style table in the center with all the appropriate mats surrounding it: another clean room...

But that didn't comfort Sasuke in the least. His entire clan was rotting outside, all of them slaughtered like pigs.

Then suddenly, Sasuke heard a noise like someone rustling through a cabinet. It had come from his parent's room...

_'Father! Mother!'_

He ran as fast as his underdeveloped legs could carry him, zipping through the house's moonlit courtyard with a pounding terror in his heart. Just as he was about to touch the handle of the sliding door, he felt that same feeling as when he had first walked into the compound.

**Tha-_thump!_**

* * *

~o0O0o~

_"Help me hold him down!" Hikari screamed to her brother, who was scrambling to get to her from across the other side of the cave, green eyes wide in alarm. All she had done was drop his cup, and suddenly the Uchiha was struggling wildly against his bindings, screaming incoherently. It was as if the sound had somehow triggered his terror._

_The nameless Uchiha's back went rigid as his eyes suddenly snapped open, causing both Hikari and Masaru to freeze. His gaze crimson._

_He had the Sharingan... It made sense, only Uchiha had those eyes, but this man's eyes were fully formed..._

_Then, without a word, the injured man slumped back down in exhaustion, falling unconscious as soon as his head connected with his pillow._

_Hikari and Masaru looked at each other in shock. They couldn't take any chances with this one..._

* * *

~o0O0o~

It was the feeling of being watched, the feeling of being hunted, killing-intent. _Sakki_...

_'Someone's in there...'_

Little Sasuke halted in front of the entrance to his mother and father's living quarters, the wooden door looming ominously before his diminutive form. Everywhere in the house was quiet... j-just like everywhere in the streets was quiet... Did that mean...?

The young boy stood there for a moment, trying and failing to catch his out-of-control breath. Every deep breath only strengthened that instinctual fear that told him to run like hell, but he shut his eyes and gritted his teeth in an attempt to dispell his terror.

_'Move!'_ he ordered.

He took a shaky step forward—

_'Move!'_

—and closed his hand around the smooth metal handle of the door. If possible, the foreboding sensation grew even stronger.

_'Move!'_ he screamed to himself.

**Tha-_thump!_**

Scared to the bone and quivering like a leaf in the wind, he slid the wooden sliding-door to the side and slowly walked forward...

It was dark at first, but eventually, the moonlight from the courtyard traveled through the room to rest on two figures. Corpses.

"Father! Mother!" Sasuke screamed as he stepped forward, his horror and fear all too real now. They were dead... _Murdered_...

Uchiha Fugaku laid atop his wife, both of whom had their eyes closed, as though asleep. There were no weapons, no evidence of any jutsu, just blood painting their clothes, their skin and pooling on the floor beneath them. It was like they hadn't stood a chance...

The Uchiha child sprinted towards the bodies of his parents, harboring a fool's hope that they were still alive, when suddenly he stopped.

Out of the darkness came a man in slow, measured steps, causing Sasuke's eyes to widen in mortal fear. For every echoing step the man took forward, Sasuke took a step back until he was backed up against edge of the room.

Only when the man stopped into the moonlight streaming through a window in front of his parents' bodies did Sasuke realize something: the man was in full ANBU regalia. His face had two distinctive lines running down from his eyes and... and he had the Sharingan...

Sasuke had never felt more relieved in his life! It was nii-san! His big brother could catch whoever did this!

"Nii-san! Father and mother were..." He shut his eyes and grit his teeth while his diminutive form shook with despair.

"Why? Why...? Who _did_ this?"

The child opened his eyes again and looked to his elder brother, that stoic sentinel of the night, in utter anguish.

_**Thud.**_

Without warning, a shuriken embedded itself in the wall behind Sasuke. As he stood there, eyes wide open in disbelief, a red line traced itself across his shoulder and his shirt ripped open, revealing a cut. Blood sprayed from the wound, filling the air with a fine red mist for a few seconds before it lessened to a small trickle of scarlet down his shoulder.

Sasuke cringed and clutched at his wound. "Nii-san, what are you—?" He stopped once he looked into Itachi's cold and uncaring eyes, the crimson eyes of a demon... He looked to his brother in hurt and confusion.

"What are you doing, nii-san?"

Itachi merely stared at him coldly. His nii-san had never looked at him like that before...

"Foolish little brother..."

Sasuke's obsidian orbs widened in horror and his pupils contracted in instinctive terror. That voice... so _cold_...

**Tha-_thump!_**

He stood there, rooted to the spot by his own fear and confusion when he suddenly felt a malevolent chakra pulse from Itachi. The ANBU captain closed his blood-red eyes for a moment before opening them again.

"Mangekyō Sharingan!" he intoned in a lifeless apathetic drone, the voice of a monster.

The three tomoe of Itachi's blood-red eyes stretched in sync before they all connected to his pupils, looking for all the world like windmills of death. The blood vessels in Itachi's eyes bulged. Whether the veins bulged with power or with strain, Sasuke couldn't tell. That design like nothing Sasuke had ever seen before, so strange and yet so frightening all at the same time.

Time and space stretched, and all of a sudden, he was outside again, but time he was high up on a post looking down at the clan compound. Everyone was still alive... The streets were brightly lit with colorful lanterns and both shinobi and civilians alike walked together, enjoying the peacefulness of the evening with one another.

The world abruptly changed color, banishing the light hues of the happy compound and instead displaying grimmer, grayer tones of color. The sky changed from a soothing dark blue to an angry, bloody orange-red. Everything looked disjointed, lifeless. It was just _wrong_.

Then came the screaming...

One after another, men and women that Sasuke had known all of his life were cut down before his eyes by some terrible specter. One by one, their blood filled the streets.

_'My legs...' _Sasuke tried to move, but he found that he could not. He was powerless here...

Some of the shinobi tried to fight back, but none of them stood a chance. They were like children in a lion's den, only able to run, and not very fast at that. All of them stumbled towards him in agony, every one of them mortally wounded, only to fall dead at his feet. _Everyone._

A final shower of shuriken proved to be more than Sasuke could take. He screamed as the fallen Uchiha had screamed, feeling every bit of their mortal pain.

"Stop! Nii-san!" He clutched his throbbing head in despair, just wanting everything to _stop._ "Don't show me this!"

A few more clan members met their fates, and in the end, amidst the reaping of so many lives, there remained only one... _Itachi_...

"Why?" Sasuke demanded, the sorrow he felt clear in his unsteady voice and tearful eyes. "Why did you do this, brother?"

Itachi just stared unflinchingly at his little brother, ignoring the carnage that littered the compound around him.

Behind Itachi, Sasuke saw a trio of Uchiha shinobi charge him from behind.

"No..."

Another trio charged him from the right.

"_No..._"

But Itachi's Sharingan was in a league of its own. Within seconds, every other shinobi was dead. Sasuke screamed again as one of the shinobi landed face-first in front of him with his legs sticking up in the air. He turned to his right where, miraculously, two of his relatives remained yet unharmed.

"Uncle! Auntie!" he yelled, desperately trying to get their attention, to warn them away from their impending doom, to tell them to run. They didn't hear him... Sasuke's uncle stood protectively in front of his Aunt, shielding her with his stocky body, face set in a ferocious snarl: but he was civilian, no obstacle to Itachi of the Sharingan.

_A single slash._

_A crimson spray._

Both of them toppled lifelessly to the floor and Sasuke clutched his head and screamed out his horror and loss into the bloody night.

The vision shifted with a swirl of black and red, and this time, Itachi was in his parents' room holding his katana high over the kneeling forms of his mother and father.

"Father... Mother..." He looked into Itachi's eyes. It was _that_ look. Sasuke lost it.

"Don't, nii-san!" He pleaded, his voice hoarse from all of his screaming and crying. "Don't do that to father and mother!"

Itachi raised his sword—

"Nii-san, _please!_"

—and slashed it down through flesh, blood, and bone alike, turning the world red with the ultimate sin.

Sasuke's eyes widened to an impossible degree, forever burning the image of his parents' deaths into his shattered mind.

"_NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!_" His anguished scream tore through the night.

Sasuke let out a strangled gasp as he was released from the genjutsu and fell to his knees, still clutching at his head. As Itachi watched his little brother hyperventilate on the floor, he allowed the Sharingan to fade from his eyes, leaving them bottomless pits of black once more.

Sasuke collapsed to the floor in utter exhaustion, his eyes completely blank, lifeless. His saliva collected in a puddle on the ground next to his face as he panted like he hadn't been breathing at all during the vision.

When the Uchiha child finally looked up at that dark and terrifying form standing over his parents, he knew without a doubt what his brother had done. Itachi Uchiha, his beloved big brother, had slaughtered his entire clan. His brother had murdered his parents... His_ brother._

"Why...?" He croaked, making an effort to push himself off the floor. "Why did you...?" He stumbled a bit.

"Too see what I was capable of," came Itachi's answer in that horribly cold and apathetic tone, the voice of a demon...

"... Too see what you were capable of?" Sasuke repeated numbly on the floor. "That was it?" He couldn't believe it. Itachi had killed everyone to _see what he was capable of?!_

Itachi merely stared at his little brother, watching his struggles to stand with dismissive black eyes, voids of darkness where his soul was suppose to reside.

Tears started to leak from Sasuke's eyes, spilling their saltiness all over his face. He did nothing to wipe them away, instead just staring at his elder brother in anguish. "You killed everyone for that reason?"

The ANBU captain closed his eyes and nodded, almost to himself. "It was necessary."

Sasuke gritted his teeth and got up on his hands and knees. "What the hell was that?" With a burst of power he didn't know he had, he launched himself across the room at the murderer of his parents in a fit of blinding fury.

"_Don't screw around!_" he snarled as he honed in on his elder brother, who merely watched him approach like he had all the time in the world. Just as Sasuke was about to leap into a flying kick with every intention of spilling his brother's brains across the floor, Itachi's fist buried itself in his stomach and lifted him off the ground. He spat out blood and saliva with the force of the blow.

* * *

~o0O0o~

_"BASTARD!" the Uchiha snarled in his sleep, putting an exhausted Hikari and Masaru on high alert. It had been days since the Uchiha's last real struggle, and ever since then he'd been plagued by nightmares of someone he called his "nii-san" and on occasion, "_that_ man" in his bleary mutterings. _

_With these constant nightmares, Hikari and Masaru were like zombies, always forced to watch over the man under their care until he stopped his moaning and cursing. Masaru was tempted to end him on multiple occasions, just so he could get some shut-eye, but his sister wouldn't hear of it._

* * *

~o0O0o~

Itachi retracted his fist and allowed Sasuke to drop to the floor like a rag-doll, gasping for air. After a moment of paralyzing pain, Sasuke looked up at his subduer, _that_ man. Tears leaked from his obsidian eyes. He had lost... His clan would never be avenged now...

As Itachi took a step forward, Sasuke's head snapped up, his eyes wide in fright.

_'I'm scared...'_

The boy forced himself to his feet—

_'I'm scared!'_

—and bolted, using his tiny legs for all they were worth. He fled from Itachi, screaming his terror the entire way. The traitor just watched him leave the room before vanishing from sight in a burst of unbelievable speed.

The last loyal Uchiha ran, screaming and crying with tears streaming down his face.

"Don't kill me!" he wailed as he fled. Sasuke slowed to a stop when Itachi appeared before him, blocking his way in the corpse-filled street. It was over... He couldn't even run. There really was no hope for him... He stared at Itachi hopelessly, just waiting for the end.

The man glared down at his younger brother as though he was looking at trash marring an otherwise perfect neighborhood.

"This can't be true!" Sasuke tried to protest. "You're not my nii-san! Because—," The older man cut him off.

"The reason why I continued to act as the brother you desired was because I wanted to verify your potential." If Sasuke's mind hadn't already been shattered ten times over, he would have been frozen at the statement. His big brother had never loved him... _ever_... But the Sharingan user wasn't done.

"You will become my opponent, as the one who will confirm my potential." Itachi blinked slowly. "You carry that potential. You detested me and held a grudge against me. You continuously wished to surpass me, and that's why I let you live, for me. You are like me, one who is capable of awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan within..."

The wind picked up and blew all the loose foliage towards the moon which rested in the heavens behind the traitor. A cloud of dust obscured the light for a moment.

"However, there is a special condition..." he continued ominously. Sasuke was seconds away from passing out in a coma, but he _had_ to stay awake!

Itachi glared at him, the boy who once called him 'aniki'. "Your closest friend... You must _kill him!_"

The wind screamed furiously, throwing around leaves and dust while Sasuke reeled at what his brother had just revealed. Itachi's hair streamed like a lion's man in the flow of the wind.

"No way..." the Academy student denied.

Itachi's eyes were shadowed as he bowed his head, as if in memory. "Just as I did..." he whispered.

The younger Uchiha gasped as he remembered three of the other clan members interrogation Itachi about the suicide of his friend, Uchiha Shisui. They were the only two who hadn't come to the clan meeting...

Sasuke stared in horrified surprise. "That was... _you?!_ _You_ killed Shisui-san?!" His own best friend...

Itachi's charcoal eyes were set in a hardened glare, like the entire world had sinned against him. "That's right. Thanks to that, I obtained these eyes." The little boy in front of him sharply inhaled in shock, his eyes wide and trembling.

"In the main building of the Nakano temple, in the right corner to the rear of the room, under the seventh tatami mat, there lies the clan's Commentary Scroll. Within its writing, the original purpose of the Uchiha Clan's dōjutsu is explained, as is its true secret."

The orphaned boy looked up, tears forgotten and curiosity piqued. Revenge would have to wait for a moment.

_'Its true secret?'_

Itachi grinned wickedly. "If you awaken it, there will be three people, including me, who have ever used the Mangekyō Sharingan." He laughed harshly. "If that can happen, there is meaning in letting you live..."

Then he stepped away. "But as you are now..." Sasuke stumbled back with a cry as Itachi shot a murderous glare at his younger brother. If looks could kill, Sasuke would have had his throat slashed right then and there. "You aren't even worth killing."

Itachi closed his eyes. "Foolish brother. If you want to kill me, then blame me. Hate me and live on in shame." Sasuke was paralyzed with shock and fear.

"Run and run... Cling desperately to life. Then one day, come before me with the same eyes I bear now!" A singular windmill eye glared down at the Uchiha child, veins bulging, as cold and unforgiving as any weapon.

After a moment of being drawn in to that horrible eye, Sasuke stumbled and faltered to a single knee. After the dark-haired boy flailed for a moment and finally steadied himself, he glared back with a freshly-awakened Sharingan, a single tomoe in each crimson eye. The former ANBU captain stared at the boy for a moment with a strange look on his face before turning away and jumping up on a roof.

"Wait!" Sasuke called as he forced himself to his feet. That murderer was _not_ getting away from him! Snatching three kunai off of the damaged wall, he jumped up after the destroyer of his clan. As he soared about a dozen feet above the wall, his Sharingan granted him perfect visual clarity, allowing him to see _exactly _where that bastard was, where he was going to be. He hurled all three kunai in a single swipe, all of them zipping straight towards the traitor's back.

Unfortunately for him, Itachi turned around just then and managed to block all three projectiles with effortless swipes of his katana. As he did so, his headband loosened and slipped from his head, landing on the ground with a dull metallic clang. Sasuke landed in a crouch unsteadily and clutched at his wounded shoulder while Itachi bent to retrieve his hitai-ate.

The murderer tied it back onto his head with robotic motions, the metallic plate only covering the right portion of his head, and he turned back to look at Sasuke one last time. The boy was on his last legs, struggling to move, struggling to fight, fighting to live. His right eye was shut tight and he panted as he clutched a bleeding left shoulder, the Sharingan long since deactivated.

At the sight, Itachi cried as he had never cried before, failing to completely mask his emotions, unable to hide his shattered soul. His broken tears were the last thing that Sasuke saw before he slipped into unconsciousness, finally giving in to his exhaustion.

_'Nii-san...'_

* * *

~o0O0o~

Sasuke woke from his nightmares like any self-respecting shinobi: motionlessly.

Not once did he twitch or even hitch in his soft, rhythmic breathing as he broadened his awareness like a raindrop ripples a still pool of water. His hearing was inevitably the first to awaken, the only sense that would not betray his consciousness. Sight required eyes, which he would have to open... No... Touch would require him to move, but even if he didn't shift his body, he could still feel his arms and feet bound tightly to a hard flat surface with what felt like rope. So he was a prisoner, was he? Beyond that however, touch could not serve him.

Smell was a bit tricky to utilize correctly. On one hand, he could analyze whatever scents his regular breathing brought to his nose, but on another, he would need to take a deep breath to truly analyze his surroundings. For now, Sasuke knew that he was tied tightly to a hard flat surface somewhere cold and damp, like it was built entirely of stone. It smelled like there was a small wood fire burning about ten yards away.

But what he heard...

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

Water? The sound echoed like there was no other noise to overwhelm it but the soft crackling of the fire. Then it dawned on him: he was tied up somewhere in a cave.

At the moment, he didn't sense anyone in the vicinity, so he slowly lifted his heavy eyelids, only to find himself staring into big amber eyes.

"..." he said nothing to betray his surprise at this brown-haired girl in front of him being able to completely conceal her presence, even though it was downright freaky.

She on the other hand squealed with delight as soon as she noticed him blink, torchlight painting her features a soft gold in what looked like a relatively dark and damp cave.

"You're awake! Finally!" She sat up and clapped her hands happily, as if he was a dog that had just learned a cool new trick.

Sasuke winced as this... _peppy_ voice pierced at his eardrums. Didn't this woman have any volume control? Right now, it was on _high_._  
_

He shifted just a bit, but immediately found that he couldn't do much more than lift his head off of the ridiculously hard surface that was his bed. Damn rope...

The woman noticed his struggling against his bonds and immediately assumed a serious expression, her smile vanishing as her lips pursed together and her amber eyes narrowed slightly. Her spine straightened and her hands which had been clapping excitedly returned to her sides. She tensed dangerously, like she was expecting him to attack any second.

"Uchiha," she said in a completely different tone than her playful voice from before. Her voice was low and serious, like a female version of the man who once called himself 'Madara', the man who had become a god. Sasuke was immediately put on guard as his mind raced with the events of the prior battle.

"Who wants to know?" he asked. He knew that if this woman knew about his clan, then there really was no point in trying to falsify what she knew to be fact. The most he could hope for was to convince her to untie him. He tried to discreetly channel a Chidori through his arms and legs, but no sooner than he did that his bindings started to glow a bright blue, all while his chakra failed to surface.

The woman smiled, smirked really. "Attempting to escape so soon, Uchiha?" she questioned in an innocent tone. Sasuke glared at her even as he stopped trying to summon his lightning to his limbs. Damn chakra-suppressors...

If possible, the lady's smirk just grew wider until she... _giggled?_

The earlier tension vanished as she collapsed on herself, giggling all the while.

"Haha! Oh, you -ha!- you should have -hehe!- seen your face just then!" Sasuke was dumbstruck. Why did he always have to meet the crazy ones? This girl went from bubbly to hostile to _joking?!_ The hell?

He waited silently for the girl to cease her laughter. As he did so, his mind wandered back to his fight with Obito, fighting alongside Naruto and the Yondaime... How exactly had he survived that? The last thing he remembered was Obito's hand crushing his skull... And where was Naru—

"What's your name, Uchiha?" the woman suddenly asked in a teasing voice, interrupting his thoughts. He gave her a quick look-over, noting the blush that blossomed on her face as he did. She was very lean and fit with defined muscles on her legs and arms, a generous chest that was somehow just the right size for her body—large enough to be admirable, yet small enough not to get in her way—dark brown shoulder-length hair that was tied back in a ponytail, and glowing amber eyes.

Thin pink lips rested below a tiny nose and high cheekbones. If Sasuke didn't have a freakish amount of self-control, he would have had very tight pants right about then. As it was, the woman was getting a bit flustered by his scrutinizing gaze, if that blush was anything to go off of.

"Sasuke," he said, startling her a bit by speaking so suddenly.

She blinked and looked up to his face, her cheeks slightly flushed.

"Wha—" He interrupted.

"My name is Sasuke." The Uchiha scion watched in fascination as the expression on this pretty woman's face changed from embarrassed to slightly confused. She looked at him with something akin to suspicion.

"Like the Sarutobi Clan-head?"

He stared. She stared back. Water dripped somewhere further back in the torchlit cave.

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

"Who?"

* * *

~o0O0o~

**Author's Note****: **_I know without a doubt that I will piss a lot of you off with this chapter by Naruto not being here and by this being a flashback, but feel free to tell me all about it in your reviews. To answer your concerns, the next chapter will be _completely_ Naruto-centric, no Sasuke at all. It just wouldn't be fair otherwise._

_Anyway, for anyone who has their doubts, or for anyone who hasn't read _The Clan Wars_, Sasuke is indeed in the Warring Clans Era. Hikari and Masaru happen to be the two Senju siblings that saw an Uchiha fall from the sky. Yes, they will be relevant to the story._

_So, did you guys like my Massacre flash-back? That took an _insane_ amount of time to write because I went entirely off of the anime, constantly going back and forth in the video to focus on different aspects each time. I tried to incorporate Sasuke's stirring into appropriate places of the Massacre. I hope that worked out... _:P

_Well... you know what to do. Read and review, let me know what you think! _

_Until next time!_


	3. To Challenge a God

**Hands of Time**

Chapter 2: To Challenge a God

* * *

~o0O0o~

For millennia, the prairie that rested at the foot of the Myouboku Mountain Range was relatively untouched, void of human life due to its isolation from the villages and larger cities. Throughout the year and even through the bone-chilling snows of the mountains, the prairie would be a vibrant, colorful place, full of life and populated with wondrous creatures. The air would be alive with the hum of crickets, the buzzing of bees and the songs of the birds. The field would be painted all the colors of the rainbow with flowers of every design.

But those peaceful creatures were gone now, all of them having escaped or died. The vibrant colors of the prairie had decayed to a sickly black and grey with the utter absence of life.

Now, the once green prairie burned in the flames of war...

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" The remaining plants fried to a crisp as the Uchiha combined their fireballs and annihilated everything within the small field—plants, animals, and shinobi alike—in a single overwhelming burst of heat.

Smoke suffused the area, and for a moment as the burning ash filled the air like the birthing of an explosive volcano, there was silence amidst the crackling of the flames.

"How many?" a deep voice asked, the man's figure concealed by the dark choking smoke. There was no reply at first, but then a wind blew down from the heavens with a purifying power, clearing away the blackening pollutants as though they never were.

There at the edge of the coniferous forest which prairie had once bordered stood a small contingent of the famed Uchiha Clan, twenty strong, all battle-ready in full clan regalia, their samurai-like armor looking scratched and a bit charred, but still strong as ever. At their head stood two men: Uchiha Izuna and his brother, the legend of the Uchiha Clan—Uchiha Madara.

Madara stood tall—around six feet—with a wild waist-long mane of midnight black flowing regally behind him, as if it were a mark of his power. His glowing red eyes held the vaunted Sharingan, fully developed with three-tomoe swirling in each eye. His expression was grim as he crossed his armored hands across his chest, his red samurai-styled armor a bit scorched from earlier in the battle.

He was Madara, one of the strongest shinobi in existence. He was the leader of the Legendary Uchiha.

Izuna bowed his head in deference to his elder brother, the only man he would ever follow unconditionally. Madara was his undisputed leader. "There are thirty-two bodies this time, aniki."

Madara frowned at the number; he could have sworn there were more of those pesky Sarutobi. It wouldn't have been unheard of for a few of that clan escape a field-level Gōkakyū with a clever use of the jutsu in their arsenal. They were the clan of monkey nin after all, bound to have a few tricks up their sleeves.

He uncrossed his arms and turned to his brother who was waiting for an order with his head still bowed. Madara's hardened gaze softened a bit as he looked upon his younger sibling, but the clan-head immediately schooled the expressions on his face: emotions on the battlefield would only get his loved ones killed. He turned to look at the contingent that had been dispatched with him and his brother, addressing them all as one.

"We're doing a sweep for survivors. Should you find any—," his twin Sharingan pulsed with a dominant power, the crimson eyes looking into his mens' very souls, "burn them alive."

None of the Uchiha even flinched at the order. Such brutality was the norm in this era. Here, it was every clan for itself, butchering and slaughtering all the rest. Alliances were tentative at best, no one clan ever truly trusting another, constantly betraying one another for their own personal gain, but mostly for their own survival. This was a time ripe with chaos and bloodshed, a time where peace was an impossible dream.

"Hai, Madara-sama!" They all clapped their fists to their chests in a cacophony of metal striking metal, a show of their loyalty. Then the twenty battle-hardened ninja raced into the burning field as one to carry out their order, and most of all, to finish off the Sarutobi battalion. They were the perfect display of coordination, moving as a single unit rather than twenty individuals, their mismatched Sharingan whirling in anticipation of more fighting. The Uchiha would prevail here.

Just as the score of disciplined shinobi was about to reach the center of the burning plain, something tore through the sky and landed with a thunderous crash in the center of the burning prairie... something that blew out the fires and cleared away the smoke.

Madara and Izuna looked on in curiosity from behind their contingent while their subordinates tensed dangerously while activating their Sharingan and slipping into the Uchiha's famed Intercepting-Fist Style, the fighting form that had been _made_ for the Sharingan, not simply copied by it.

Then they all simultaneously cried out in pain as a brilliant flash of light overtook the clearing, the white rays piercing their Sharingan like flaming spears from the heavens.

* * *

~o0O0o~

Naruto knew he was screwed the moment that Obito's hand clamped down on his face. He knew that after Obito killed him, the bastard would go after the rest of the world. What he didn't realize was that Obito had _slipped_.

When the Juubi Jinchuuriki, the man who had ascended to godhood, had been about to eradicate the blond and his Uchiha teammate from existence, he had slightly lost his control of the Juubi's power. Ever so slightly. The tailed-beast-bomb that was supposed to spear the heads of the two teenagers in his grasp instead tore through time and space. In other words, Obito's complete lack of control had sent two of the most powerful upcoming shinobi in the world, the two shining lights of their era, careening backwards in time.

Not that Naruto knew any of that. At the moment, the Uzumaki was passed out as he fell through the tear in the time-space continuum.

Little did he know that the area in the dimensional tear possessed an absurd amount of natural chakra which congealed around around anything that would respond to it. It was rather unfortunate for Naruto that as a sage, he had quite a bit of reactivity to natural chakra. As such, the volatile energy that saturated the space that resided in-between time and space engulfed him like a swarm of pirana.

"AUUUGHH!" Naruto snapped awake as the energy coursing through his body literally made him start to smoke and put a burning feeling through his gut, like the worst heartburn ever. He instinctually regulated the natural energy as he fell through the inky blackness that rested just outside the realm of reality, wrestling with it until the power submitted to his will.

His eyes snapped open, a burnished gold with a black horizontal pupils, while his eyelids were painted with an iridescent orange, much like his torn and battered clothing. _Sage-mode._

Naruto would have looked rather impressive had anyone actually been around to see him, or if he wasn't literally in the darkest place in existence.

Now that he was no longer in mortal danger of being fried by the volatility that was natural energy, he came to a realization: he'd been falling for a _really_ long time. He did the natural thing.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" He screamed out in one long, drawn-out, wordless cry as he plummeted to what was presumably his impending doom.

He screamed to no one in particular, as if his ridiculously large amount of luck would somehow take pity on him once more. He waited a moment. Great. No response...

His thoughts flew back to his world, the one he had been fighting for before he woke up to this flight through the darkness. He remembered the people he had sworn to protect.

The faces of his friends flashed before his eyes, worn and ragged, desperate to save the only home they knew. Two in particular lingered longer than the rest, one pink-haired and green-eyed with a vicious temper while the other was a gentler soul with pale eyes and long blue hair.

_'Sakura-chan... Hinata...'_ The two he had to protect above all costs. He had failed to protect them... He had _failed_.

The whiskered blond closed his eyes golden eyes in shame, the darkness he saw never wavering for an instant. He never noticed the sudden light that appeared far below him: a circle, almost like a hole in the blackness—the other side of the dimensional tear.

_'I'm sorry... I really wanted to protect you, all of you...'_ He screwed his eyes shut at the pain stabbing through his soul, conveniently blotting the out light below him that was steadily growing stronger by the second.

"I tried," he whispered, his apology lost in the roar of the wind.

And then there was light.

* * *

~o0O0o~

His head snapped up to the sound of men screaming in pain.

Naruto was understandably startled. "What the—?!" He opened his eyes, and for the first time in what seemed like hours, he could _see_. Well, not really. Everything was obscured by a blinding white light that was particularly painful to his enhanced sight.

"AAUUUGHH! My eyes!" He hissed as he clutched this throbbing golden orbs. After enduring several moments of stabbing pain through his optical organs, Naruto risked opening his eyes again, slowly this time.

The light had lessened a bit in its overpowering brilliance, revealing a scorched, rocky landscape, hardened by what could only be the most intense of flames. And then he saw them, _sensed _them spread out in front of him like hunting wolves itching for the kill.

There were twenty shinobi, all of them alive. He had never felt their chakra before, but he recognized the quality combined with an exclusive combustive element: fire chakra. Their chakra felt a only a bit like Sasuke's, but a lot like Edo-Itachi's, Obito's and Madara's.

It had that same coldness, that same rage that permeated every fiber of their beings. Itachi was nearly emotionless, but the other three Uchiha that Naruto had encountered certainly qualified for the 'rage' aspect of the chakra. More than that, the shinobi before him had the special chakra that all dōjutsu users forced to their eyes, Byakugan, Sharingan, and Rinnegan alike.

Uchiha... How were there _Uchiha?!_

And a certain presence behind the platoon froze Naruto's blood.

Twin storms of chakra with a potency that made the air around them hum with power. One was weaker than the other, but that wasn't what worried the whiskered blond.

What worried him was that he _recognized_ the larger storm of fiery chakra.

"Madara..." Naruto whispered under his breath. The light was dimming, but it had yet to vanish and still obscured everything but the ground. In front of him was Madara who had set in motion the revival of the Juubi. Madara who had set in motion Obito's betrayal and the Fourth Great Shinobi War. Madara whom he _knew_ had killed Tsunade-baa-chan and the other Kage who _never_ would have let him go while they were still alive.

"_Madara_..."

Madara whom he still couldn't see...

But that didn't mean that he couldn't _fight!_

"MADARA!" Naruto screamed, causing every Uchiha in the vicinity to put themselves on high alert, saturating their eyes with chakra. "I'M GONNA _KILL YOU!_"

After a moment of surprised silence, a deep voice shouted out from somewhere in front of him, "Kill the Sarutobi!"

There was an answering chorus of, "Yes sir!" that put Naruto on guard, despite the fury that tinged his vision in shades of red. There were a lot of them, and they all sounded eager, but ultimately they were all just in the way. They felt too weak for the jinchuuriki to even bother with them.

The Uchiha shinobi all immediately flung a barrage of kunai and shuriken where they had heard what they assumed to be a surviving Sarutobi, but no one was there to get hit...

The deadly hail of shinobi steel passed through thin air before clanking off the fire-hardened ground with the harsh, grating sound of metal striking rock. Not a single one had hit the target.

* * *

~o0O0o~

Madara and Izuna tensed and slipped into the famed Intercepting-Fist style unique to their clan, back to back, ready to catch any and all threats. After a moment, with the light dimming to the point where he could finally see his clan members out in front of him, Izuna relaxed with a smirk.

"The coward must have run like the monkey he wa—," He was cut-off by an overwhelming noise, like innumerable blades slicing through the air. His trained ears tracked the noise on instinct.

_'Not in front, behind, to the right or the left...' _Noise like the tearing of the wind got even closer. Damn...

Izuna looked up in a panic, his matured Sharingan whirling furiously. Blinding power greeted his incredulous gaze.

"Brother! Incoming!"

Madara turned around just in time to see a blond ninja with the strangest golden eyes, almost like a toad's, and whiskers that looked like they'd been carved into his cheeks, hurtling towards him from about fifty yards away in the air.

Madara wasn't worried about the shinobi himself—a shinobi with virtually no armor save a forehead-protector, he was worried about what said shinobi was holding: a ridiculously large and dense mass of compressed blue chakra spinning in a sphere that hovered above his right hand. Four screeching, white blades of pure energy spun around it, looking as if they could and would shred through anything they came in contact with.

The ninja was somehow holding a chakra-shuriken, which by all rights should have exploded with the sheer amount of destructive force it contained.

Madara's calculating crimson eyes narrowed. This was no Sarutobi...

He shifted so that he and Izuna were standing together to face this new threat. Almost immediately after positioning himself, Madara's eyes widened in utter panic as the blond shinobi with strange golden eyes that didn't seem quite like a dōjutsu did something absolutely ridiculous — he fucking _threw it!_

* * *

~o0O0o~

Naruto had just made his Rasenshuriken with the help of two Shadow Clones, and now he was holding the jutsu while he soared high in the air. Sage-mode was great for this kind of thing; he could jump a lot higher with nature-chakra coursing through his body than without. In fact, just about anything physical could be amplified to the max with the addition of a little senjutsu chakra.

As a fully-realized sage, Naruto was faster, stronger, and _so_ much more powerful.

"EAT _THIS!_" he screamed at Madara, the man who deserved death more than anyone else, as he heaved his ultimate ninjutsu at the Uchiha.

Madara's crimson eyes widened in shock as the unbelievably volatile and dense ball of chakra sped towards him and his brother, kicking up an absurd amount of dust from high above the rocky ground as it passed overhead, the high-pitched screeching of the four chakra blades drowning out all other sounds with a wailing fury.

Naruto watched heatedly, falling from his position high in the air as his jutsu honed in on Madara and some other Uchiha that he didn't recognize. He wasn't sure how Madara was free of the Edo-Tensei, evident by the quality of his chakra and by the whites of his eyes, but he sure as hell was going send him back to the hell from whence he crawled.

The Rasenshuriken honed in on the two Uchiha brothers like it had a mind of its own, actively treating them like they were prey. Much to the horror of the contingent out on the burning plain and most of all to the horror of Madara and Izuna, it _expanded_.

With a staggering boom and a gust of wind that could literally blow people away, the wind-natured Rasengan broadened to a dome the size of a small house, completely engulfing the dumbstruck Uchiha siblings. The wailing rose to an unbearable pitch as the wind itself was pierced a billion times over by microscopic chakra blades, blasting everything they touched into oblivion.

Naruto landed lightly on his feet, ignoring the stunned Uchiha platoon behind him as he observed the dome of glowing white wind-natured chakra-blades go wild, even as periodic gusts escaped and buffeted his hair in a circular expulsion of wind. Naruto had finally won, but was it worth it? All this despair for the death of one man?

Was it worth the lives of his friends?

No... Nothing was worth that. Nothing...

"Damn you Madara," Naruto whispered, clenching his fist, holding back his treacherous tears. If he cried now, he would never be able to look Inari in the face again.

This was a hollow victory. He couldn't sense the chakra of _anyone_ in the alliance. That meant only one thing: Obito had killed them all, and Obito only had his power because of the efforts of one person.

"Damn you." His voice was tremulous, threatening to break with all his pent-up emotions.

**Boom.**

Naruto looked up in time to see the dome of the Rasenshuriken burst, unleashing the contained wind in a single blast as a gigantic sapphire sword slashed through, causing the surrounding area to erupt in a storm of dust and rocks. Although the dust-cloud rendered the blond's sage-eyes useless, by no means was his sensing capacity impaired. He could still feel the powerful hum of their fire-chakra saturating the air around where the Rasenshuriken had hit. Madara was alive.

"Fuck."

The hairs on the back of the Uzumaki's neck prickled and Naruto threw himself to the side in a desperate roll as the giant sword impaled itself in the ground where he had been moments before with a force that made the earth shatter. The jinchuuriki sprang straight into his frog-kumite stance, a stance specifically designed for hand-to-hand combat in sage-mode, as he waited for the dust to clear.

Madara was still alive. The Uchiha must have used the Susano'o to escape. No, he _did_ use the Susano'o to escape. Naruto recognized that freakin' huge sword that almost crushed him just now. It was probably what he had used to kill Tsunade Baa-chan.

"..."

Suddenly, Naruto wanted Madara dead that much more. He wanted it so much that his blood was humming with fury, his vision tinted red and his limbs shook with anticipation. The Uzumaki was lost in his need for vengeance.

The clouds of debris fell back to the earth with the dull clatter of rock against rock and Naruto snarled as soon as he caught sight of his opponent.

The legendary Uchiha stood tall, the other man right behind him, both protected by the sapphire ethereal warrior-giant: but something was... _wrong_ with Madara. The Uchiha was clutching his eyes, his _bleeding_ eyes, and his Mangekyō was different. At the moment, Naruto was a bit too distracted to notice _how _Madara's eyes were different, but he still knew. Somehow, they felt less powerful.

_'Why isn't he using the Rinnegan?'_ Naruto didn't know that either, but then again, a lot of things were strange.

Why was he burning with senjutsu chakra when he woke up? Why did so many shinobi feel like _living_ Uchiha? Where was Obito? Where were everyone's bodies? And most importantly, why wasn't that bastard Madara using his Rinnegan?

Naruto's head was starting to hurt from all these unanswered questions.

* * *

~o0O0o~

Izuna looked to his elder brother in shock. Madara was _losing_. He had been pushed to use the highest form of the Sharingan, and it had barely been enough to shield them from that consuming dome of wind.

"Madara-nii," he whispered. The older Uchiha just coughed out blood in response, the scarlet trickling down his chin. Madara who had defeated every other clan except for those blasted Senju, who had unlocked the secrets of the Sharingan, who had always been there for him, was in _pain_.

Izuna glared at their blond assailant, the ninja who had pushed his elder brother to this coughing, hacking state with his treasured eyes crying tears of blood. His eyes blazed in absolute hatred. His eyes burned with _power_.

"You BASTARD!" Izuna's three-tomoed eyes suddenly pulsed and stretched, the black markings blurring until they formed a black circle connected to the edges of his pupil by three evenly spaced thick, straight black lines, all surrounding a small red dot in the center: Izuna's Mangekyō Sharingan.

The armor-less shinobi made for an incredibly easy target, seeing as he was dressed in tattered clothing of black and bright orange.

Izuna snarled, "DIE! _AMATERASU!_"

Reality bent, and then unstoppable black flames sped across the clearing with a single purpose: _annihilate_.

* * *

~o0O0o~

In Sage-mode, Naruto could sense just about anything. Senjutsu-chakra didn't just augment his physical capabilities, it made him _connected_ to the world around him because in nature, nothing is ever alone.

Natural chakra had the most peculiar ability to create a 'sixth sense' of sorts amongst its users. By taking in the chakra around him, a sage is able to refine his senses to the max, far surpassing the capabilities of any animal. In reality, this ultimate refinement of the five senses was more like an extension of the being, in which the sage actually becomes part of everything around him.

As a fully realized sage, Naruto could feel everything around him from the strongest and most chakra-intensive techniques to the subtlest of genjutsu. He could hear the fluttering of a butterfly, differentiate between raindrops in a thunderstorm. He could feel the flow of the life energies around him, the raging force of the Uchiha's souls: he could feel the overwhelming power of Madara's Susano'o. But most of all, he could feel an unstoppable force building up behind that other Uchiha's eyes. That man had an uncanny resemblance to Sasuke, which was downright creepy in Naruto's opinion._  
_

Within the protection of Madara's four-armed Susano'o, the unknown Uchiha looked to the Madara in shock, watching his bloody coughing and hacking with wide, horrified eyes. After a brief moment, he speared Naruto with a glare of absolute hatred.

There was a pulse of power, and the tomoe in the Uchiha's Sharingan stretched violently. Naruto was flabbergasted.

_'Shit! He has the Mangekyō too!'_

As the Mangekyō wielder's eyes settled into their final forms, the sense of apprehension that Naruto was feeling just about exploded, alarms blaring and red flags flying.

The Uchiha snarled with a hatred few could match, so much that Naruto was actually caught off guard, "DIE! _AMATERASU!_"

Naruto's eyes bulged as familiar flames of black sprang into existence and raced towards him.

And then he screamed in agony as he burned in hellfire.

* * *

~o0O0o~

Madara could barely see, everything was just one large blur. As soon as that blond shinobi had heaved the chakra-shuriken at him and Izuna - something that shouldn't have even been possible - Madara knew he only had one choice: he had to summon a war god.

The Susano'o, an ancient warrior-giant bound by the powers of the Mangekyō Sharingan, only to be called upon in the direst of situations.

The four-handed giant's power transcended the mortal world to the extent that he could only be summoned in corporeal form, forever burdened, restrained by the weakness of his summoner. The stronger the summoner, the more of the warrior-god could manifest on the mortal plane.

Izuna and Madara Uchiha were the first to evolve past the Sharingan in eons. They were the ones who discovered the true power of betrayal, the first to unveil the strength of the Mangekyō, but they were never equals.

Madara, prodigy child of the Uchiha Clan, heir to all its powers, was the only one strong enough to summon the warrior-god in all his glory, despite the burning agony that always followed. He was the only one who was able to endure the sheer power that the giant demanded, even if the drain of the technique brought him to his knees in agony. Izuna was simply incapable of such intensity.

But the younger brother of Uchiha Madara was not one to be left behind. He was powerful in his own right, enhancing his clan's flames until they turned black with heat. Izuna was astounded when his elder brother was not only able to conjure the same devastating flames as he, the very essence of the revered Amaterasu herself, but he could even suppress them! Izuna himself had only been able to direct the black inferno and watch it burn itself out.

And for what was perhaps the fifth time in his life, Madara saw his younger brother cast the ultimate fire-ninjutsu, "DIE! _AMATERASU!_"

He wheezed as he watched the blond's eyes widen in alarm and an emotion that almost seemed like a belated recognition. Impossible. The only ones to have ever known about the flames of the sun goddess were he and Izuna. They had been especially careful about that.

But nonetheless, it _was_ recognition he saw in the strange shinobi's eyes. Fortunately, Izuna would be tying up loose ends with his mostly-eternal flames of black.

* * *

~o0O0o~

Naruto was no stranger to pain. It was a constant companion that held a special piece of his soul. But _this_, this was far worse than anything he had ever felt. Not even the time when Nagato had speared him with chakra-rods repeatedly had been this bad.

The world burned in flames of the blackest void. Amaterasu _sucked_.

"AAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!"

Within mere moments, Naruto was no longer burning along with the rest off his body. Rather, he was in a very familiar sewer.

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

He looked up to the giant russet fox that glared down at him disapprovingly.

**"You idiot,"** it growled, the sound echoing throughout the industrial sewer, easily overpowering the soft monotony of the dripping water.

Naruto stared groggily.

**"You're my jinchuuriki. _Act_ like it! My power is not merely a party trick!"**

Naruto looked like he was about to barf, his skin was deathly pale and his eyes bloodshot. "Kurama?" he managed weakly.

The nine-tails flailed his tails in frustration. **"You already have my power to finish off Madara in an instant, but you use _sage-mode_?!"**

Naruto fell to his knees. "Kurama," he choked out. The fox's crimson eyes widened as he realized just how badly his jinchuuriki had fared the battle. "Help." The blond's eyes rolled fully back in his head and he collapsed to the watery floor of his mindscape.

The bijuu stared in pure disbelief for a moment, then sighed. **"I guess I'll take over for now, brat."** Then he reached out with a massive clawed hand and lightly tapped Naruto's prone form with a finger.

**"I'll be taking your body for a moment."** The mindscape rumbled with power.

* * *

~o0O0o~

_**Author's Note:** Sorry for the wait. College applications weigh down on you after a while._

_Anyway, I hope this was enough Naruto for your standards. Nonetheless, if you were dissatisfied with my writing, don't hesitate to give me criticism. I actually take all your reviews into account for each new chapter, especially what you didn't like._


	4. Restraints

**Hands of Time**

Chapter 3: Restraints

* * *

~o0O0o~

For what seemed the millionth time that day, Sasuke struggled against the rope that held him down. It had been a week since he had woken up, and he honestly wasn't sure what to think. He was fairly certain that he and Naruto had been fighting Obito alongside the resurrected Hokage, but afterwards... nothing. Afterwards, it was like his memory had just vanished. There was no wall blocking him, there was no intricate puzzle that he had to solve to regain access. It was just _gone_. That, more than anything, put Sasuke on edge.

For the moment, he was content at glaring a hole through the back of Masaru's head as the Senju sharpened his kunai where he sat comfortably against the stone walls of the cave opposite to where Sasuke was tied up. The torchlight, dim as it was, did wonders for Sasuke's vision in the darkness of the damp stone cavern.

The red-gold light flickered to and fro in response to a breeze he couldn't feel. The repetitive motions of the kunai against the grindstones reminded the Uchiha of Suigetsu, always obsessing over those swords of his. He absently wondered how everyone had fared the battle. Who had survived and who had perished? It was an admittedly unpleasant thought, but he had been avoiding the subject for quite some time. Why; he couldn't exactly say.

Sakura had certainly gotten stronger since the last time he saw her, but she had a tendency to attack without reserve whenever she saw an opening, which often left her back wide open. He checked her off the list. For the heck of it, Sasuke decided to review the chances of survival for the rest of the 'Konoha Eleven' as they had supposedly come to be called.

Neji was lying on the ground with a gigantic wooden spear skewering him from behind—Sasuke had passed his corpse on his way to the battlefield. He checked him off the list as well. Lee, on the same Genin team as Neji, was one of Konoha's best taijutsu specialists. That meant, unfortunately for him, that his only option for fighting was to get up close. That would never work against Obito. Lee joined Neji and Sakura in the "presumed dead" section of the list that Sasuke was compiling. Well, in Neji's case, it was far past "presumed".

On the same squad as Neji and Lee, Tenten was a weapons specialist, able to wield just about everything that the shinobi world had to offer. The brown eyed brunette with hair tied up in twin buns also had an affinity for summoning scrolls, if Sasuke recalled correctly. But even if she was a ranged weapons expert, Obito had absorbed a _god_. Obito could compress tailed-beast-bombs to the size of a small coin and manipulate them at will. Sasuke checked Tenten off the list.

Then the Uchiha got annoyed and checked everyone off the "living" section and into the "presumed dead" section. He had a feeling that Naruto would have yelled at him for that, but he didn't give a damn. If anyone was going to survive the Juubi Jinchuuriki, it would be Naruto. So long as the blond was alive, Sasuke didn't really care about anything else.

Even if Konoha, the village he had sworn to protect, was reduced to rubble, Naruto was the embodiment of its ideals. Naruto was the Will of Fire made flesh. Heck, even that strange chakra-cloak of his represented a wreath of flames. So long as Naruto was alive, the Konoha that Itachi strove to protect would live on. And Sasuke _knew _that his old teammate was alive. It was almost like an annoying pulse of power. He had felt it a week ago, but there was no denying that it was there. The feeling was unmistakable: Naruto had been using the Kyuubi...

"What're you staring at, Uchiha trash?"

Sasuke looked up at the venomous snarl and into narrowed green eyes. The Senju before him would have looked impressive by normal standards, broad shoulders and a tall, muscular build — but shinobi judged strength differently. Among ninja, strength is something above mere brute force. Strength is the ability to overwhelm and dominate, whatever the means. Strength is the means to outsmart and to outmaneuver. It is ruthlessness and cunning in a horrifying combination. But above all, strength is skill.

Skill among shinobi is the sheer talent of ending another life: the fierce ability to kill.

Sasuke knew from the look in his eyes that this Senju had that inner strength. He knew that his jailer was long past the hesitation and guilt that comes with murder. He didn't know why, but it comforted him that his jailer wasn't an amateur. Perhaps, he thought, it was because his pride could suffer a bit less under the knowledge that he had been captured by a skilled killer rather than some greenhorn dabbling in chakra.

"Cat got your tongue?"

Sasuke snorted but looked away, not dignifying the jab with a response. The Senju, Masaru, growled under his breath, but went back to sharpening his many kunai, filling the cave with the sharp metallic echoes of the knives against the grindstone.

_Scrape._

_Scrape._

_Scrape._

Sasuke's nose twitched. This damn Senju, or so he claimed to be, seemed dead-set on annoying the crap out of him. He'd been keeping this up for the past week: sharpening kunai, pounding makeshift armor back into shape after damage from who knows what creatures, gutting animals for food, pounding grains. For some reason, Masaru did everything that involved noise in front of Sasuke, just for kicks.

_Scraaaaaaapppppeeeeee._

Sasuke cringed at the extented cacophony that seemed to drive nails through his eardrums, ever so slightly straining against the rope that had sealed away his chakra. When, as expected, his restraints didn't yield, he settled for glaring at the brunette Senju who in turn smirked back at him.

"Whaaaat? The widdle Uchiwa doesn't wike the noise?" Masaru adopted a wide-eyed look with a trembling lip. "Does he want me to stop?" _So_ damn condescending...

Sasuke was sure a vein had started throbbing just then. He couldn't reach his head to confirm it, but he could feel the pulsating sensation nonetheless. Damn. He had shown emotion. Masaru: 54, Sasuke: 52. Oh yes. It was a competition.

Sasuke was sure he was going to have to endure more torture of simply being in the other man's company when he heard it — the sound of salvation.

"Masaru~!" Hikari skipped in through the cave entrance, brushing aside the deer pelt that separated Sasuke from the rest of the cave system. Her black leather armor stuck to her form like a second skin and her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail.

Amber eyes shone in the torchlight, full of life. All in all, Sasuke deemed she looked a bit too perky to be a ninja, but as he'd established before, appearances did not determine strength in the shinobi world. Obito was a glaring exception to this rule, having taken the form of a demonic man with bony spines protruding from his back, but he was more or less a singularity.

Sasuke was especially glad to see the woman because in her presence, that insufferable brother of hers was incredibly well-behaved. It was almost like she'd trained him or something. As soon as the amber-eyed female had bounced sunnily into the torchlit cave, her brother clammed up and went back to sharpening his kunai like it was the only thing he wanted to do. It was almost laughable.

Almost.

"Ah, Uchiha-san! You're up!" She bounded over to him.

"Hn..." Sasuke didn't understand what she was trying to say with such an obvious statement as her greeting. She didn't seem to be deterred by his lack of a response from trying to make conversation with him. If anything, his overused grunting only made her more determined to talk, much to Sasuke's chagrin. Hikari might have been aesthetically pleasing, but _gods_ could she talk.

It was worse than listening to Karin and Suigetsu pestering one another. Hikari didn't seem to need another person to converse with, she carried the conversation like she was a one-woman crowd. Sasuke had the feeling that the woman could talk to a wall if need be.

"So I was wondering..." Sasuke looked up when Hikari addressed him again, apparently refusing to let the conversation—if it could be called that with only a few words and a grunt exchanged—die, "what do you know about cooking?"

"..." Sasuke raised a brow and Hikari tried mightily to hold back a blush. It was easy to tell that he wasn't directly the cause of said blush: the woman was embarrassed about something else... perhaps a potential lack of domestic skills?

The Uchiha noted that the only food he had ever seen and received in his time as a captive of these Senju siblings was pre-made rations—food for a war, definitely not for taste. And Hikari and Masaru couldn't cook to save their lives, but it was nothing Sasuke wasn't used to. Karin, for all her traipsing around trying to be his wife, didn't know the first thing about using a kitchen.

He decided to speak then, never one for unnecessarily prolonged conversations. "I can prepare food adequately," he admitted. The information was harmless to his current position. It wasn't like things could get much worse for him anyway. He, the last of his clan and one of the most powerful _ever_ had been captured and restrained. If that wasn't a huge blow to his pride, then Sakura's hair was green and Karin loved Suigetsu.

Bad move. Hikari grinned maniacally.

"Good!" She pulled a rabbit carcass out of nowhere along with some nuts and berries and shoved them in his face. "You're making dinner tonight!"

Sasuke blinked incredulously for a moment, then deadpanned. "I'm tied to your bed..." He heard Masaru snort from the corner of the cave, but Hikari's grin didn't falter. She snapped her fingers.

And the rope fell loose...

Sasuke fell to the uneven, rocky floor, grimacing as his arms and legs began the uncomfortable process of restoring bloodflow. Unfortunately for him, Hikari seemed to notice when he tensed his muscles in preparation to flee.

"I wouldn't bother, Uchiha-san." Her voice might as well have come from an ice-queen. It was cold and every bit as imperious as he would expect from royalty of an ancient bloodline. Sasuke looked his captor in the eye and almost flinched at what he saw: undeniable confidence, unshakable determination. It was as creepy as trying to stare down Naruto...

"Those ropes are infused with Uzumaki seals." Crap. Anyone who knew anything about history knew to run the other way when the Uzumaki's made their seals. From what he knew, they were responsible for creating the seals used to contain the Bijuu. Hikari apparently wasn't done speaking.

"... And they are now keyed-in to your unique chakra signature." To demonstrate, the Senju woman quickly made a few hand-seals and released a small, almost minuscule, burst of chakra. "Fuin!"

The rope found Sasuke like it was a starving snake and he was the plump mouse. Within moments, the Uchiha found himself struggling on the floor against the infernal piece of twine. His chakra, which had just been about to resurface, once again retreated to the inner depths of his coils. It was almost enough to make him cry.

Almost.

Hikari beamed. "Nothing beats Uzumaki sealing! This way, we can guarantee your cooperation!" Sasuke would have cursed at her, but the rope had taken it upon itself to snake its way into his mouth and around his head, effectively gagging him. The Uchiha growled, but the sound was muffled by the rope, ruining the dramatic effect. He hated her so much.

Meanwhile, Masaru cackled like a hyena in his corner of the cave. Sasuke hated him too.

* * *

~o0O0o~

The ninth and arguably most powerful Bijuu stared in utter disbelief as his container fell to the watery floor at his feet, dead to the world. Of all the fucking times to lose consciousness...

However, Kurama had lived for far too long to panic at a time like this. At an age of over two millennia, he'd pretty much seen it all. He'd seen puny empires rise and fall. He'd seen the birth of new bloodlines and ingenious architecture. He'd seen brilliant leaders blaze with an overpowering light, only to be snuffed out by the fearful and the jealous. But most of all, he'd seen war for what it truly was: countless skirmishes that took the lives of millions—innumerable sackings of towns and cities.

Kurama knew war like it was the back of his hand. If he'd ever truly had a purpose, it was to fight and eliminate the festering hatred that would inevitably surface whenever the humans converged. He was meant to be a cleansing force of nature that washed away diseased civilizations and allowed humanity to start anew with a newfound aversion to fighting and death. But they never failed to forget the price of a foul mind and tainted soul, so the Nine-Tails' job resurfaced every few decades or so.

Now though, he was confronted with the little apes he hated above all—the blasted Uchiha clan led by Madara himself! Although he dearly wished to rip their flesh and break their bones—Madara especially—his first priority was to save Naruto from these excruciating black flames.

Kurama sighed. This would have been far easier with Naruto awake to channel his power. **"I guess I'll take over for now, brat."**

He reached out across the mindscape unhindered, his cage having been deemed unnecessary by his Uzumaki partner, and lightly tapped Naruto's stomach with a razor-sharp claw, careful not to skewer him like he had Naruto's parents.

**"I'll be taking your body for a moment."** The air hummed with the spontaneous release of pure, unadulterated power — chakra at its finest. The Tailed-Beast allowed his unrivaled strength to flow through the human body of his container.

When the Kyuubi finally looked through Naruto's eyes, using the blond's sight as his own, the world around him roiled in chaos.**  
**

He grinned. If there was anything he liked in particular, it was chaos. He _thrived _in chaos.

It was his calling.

* * *

~o0O0o~

Madara of the Uchiha Clan watched in satisfaction as the blond shinobi burned to his death in what was undoubtedly the most powerful fire-ninjutsu ever created. There was a certain sadistic satisfaction is watching his enemies suffer, but overall, it was in his nature to be efficient.

Watching this strange yet powerful ninja barely out of his teens melt in the black flames of Amaterasu was wasting time. And there was every chance that the Sarutobi would call on the Senju to retaliate. He needed to get back to the rest of his clan as fast as possible.

The Clan Head suddenly realized that he'd been unnecessarily powering his Susano'o, sacrificing his tremendous portions of his chakra to sustain it while the threat of the whiskered blond had more or less been eliminated. With a gasp, he released the otherworldly warrior back to its own plane of existence. Just like that, he could _breathe_ again.

Internally, he sighed. This was why he considered the Susano'o a last resort. Not only did its usage slowly deteriorate his eyesight, something every Uchiha took immense pride in, but it also brought him to his knees with a severe case of chakra exhaustion. If it wasn't for it the brilliant combination of attack and defense the Susano'o provided, Madara would have never used the technique for the sheer inconvenience afterwards.

"Madara-nii?" He turned his head slightly to examine his younger brother. Izuna was fairing far better than him, but that was exactly as he'd intended. He'd sooner take his own life than watch the last of his brothers die.

"Madara-nii?" Izuna was slightly more concerned than before, having received no response from his brother. Madara coughed, grimacing at the metallic taste of blood as it seeped into his mouth. He was used to it, but he'd never really liked the sharp tang of iron on his tongue.

Madara's Sharingan reverted back to its three-tomoed state, reducing the stress on his eyes immensely.

"Izuna."

"Y-Yes, brother?" At the moment, Madara's voice was about as cold and uncaring as a blizzard, something he'd never before used on Izuna.

"Finish him."

They both looked at their blond assailant who was still writhing in unimaginable pain as the black flames of Amaterasu burned him into nothingness.

"I think that's unnecessary, brother. He's about to—"

"Izuna. _Now._" No chances could be taken with anyone who'd forced him to use the Susano'o.

The younger Uchiha faltered for a moment, a bit on edge by the sudden frostiness of his brother, but ultimately he bowed.

"As you wish, Madara-nii."

Izuna advanced on the dying shinobi, pulling out the kunai that he intended to shove into the burning man's jugular as he had so many others. Just as he was close enough to ram his kunai through the burning body, he froze. Madara was about to snarl at his brother to finish their enemy when he felt it—overwhelming power, even greater than before.

**BOOM.**

A pillar of golden light exploded from the blond's body and reached high into the heavens, blasting away the black flames like they were cobwebs. Izuna who had been a mere three feet away was blown away as though he were a leaf. Madara scrambled and caught him with a grunt, ignoring the groaning protest of his limbs and ribcage as he stopped his brother's body from smearing on the ground.

All the while, the pillar of golden light reached higher and higher into the smoke-filled sky until it burst in the air, creating a shock-wave that spanned for miles. Then the fluctuating light retreated until it caressed the horribly burnt form of the blond shinobi and—unbelievably—began to revitalize him, healing his cuts and banishing his burns.

As soon as the light was finished healing the blond, it plunged into him, saturating his being with its power, raw as it was. Madara decided that he probably should have attacked while the light was occupied.

He looked at Izuna reproachfully. "Next time, don't ever hesitate. _Ever._" Izuna never even looked at him, his wide eyes completely focussed on the now-glowing form of the orange wearing male who'd attacked them.

Turning around, Madara succeeded in capturing the attention of every Uchiha clan member out in the field with a single crimson glare, despite the fact that they were petrified at the events that had unfolded before their eyes.

"Fall back to base! This is not a power you can handle!" They hesitated for a moment, obviously unwilling to leave the heirs to the entire clan behind in the face of an unknown power, but the relented at the look in their Clan-head's eyes. A burning determination. A fiery will to survive.

Fists clapped to breastplates in a cacophony of metal striking metal. "Hai, Madara-sama!"

With a collective nod, they turned heel and fled, trusting in the power of their leader to deal with this foreign threat.

Turning back towards the upwards-reaching beacon, Madara focused his attention on the shining form of the shinobi who had very nearly destroyed him. He didn't like the look of that golden aura that was surrounding the unconscious body, and he especially didn't like the way it continually repaired the damage to the enemy ninja, restoring his body as though Izuna had never cast the black flames of Amaterasu. That was another thing that Madara really didn't like — someone had actually survived the ultimate fire ninjutsu _after_ it almost melted off their face.

He would have immediately attacked—just to keep the ninjutsu's track record clean—had the earlier confrontation not given him a healthy sense of caution.

Izuna placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him support he hadn't realized he'd needed. Madara looked into the whirling eyes of his brother and he could clearly see the emotion brimming in the surface. Rage, sorrow, determination, but most of all, fear. Izuna was afraid that he would die today. That more than anything fueled Madara's fury as his Sharingan pulsed with a fresh flow of chakra.

He would never let that happen. Never again...

Suddenly, there was an impact on the side of his face and the world tumbled around him at crazy speeds. It hurt like hell.

* * *

~o0O0o~

Kurama breathed in deeply—something he hadn't properly done in decades. It felt nice, even if it wasn't through his own body. He could feel his chakra revitalizing Naruto's broken form, healing the cuts and banishing the burns.

It was a good thing that he and Naruto had been bonded for as long as they had, because the blond had developed a resonance with his own potent chakra. For the moment, the giant fox was able to force himself into control of Naruto's body, but he was restrained.

In this forced takeover of his partner's body, he only had a few minutes. Six at the most. Internally, he cursed his container for leaving him to do all the work. Internally because he was still working on gaining control of Naruto's jaw. No, wait... he got it!

The ninth Bijuu wiggled human fingers and shook human limbs as he forced a head that was not his off the burnt, almost glassy ground. His breath caught in his throat when he saw them.

_Uchiha._

If there was any single part of humanity that deserved to be eradicated, it was the Uchiha and to a lesser extent, the Senju. Ironically, the descendants of his creator, the Sage of Six Paths, were the ones who least carried his legacy. Those clans more than any other spread war and suffering. They tainted their souls as they fought one another for control, both sides committing unforgivable crimes in the process. Their constant betrayal and backstabbing stained their souls black with sin.

Kurama shifted a bit in Naruto's body, transferring most of the body-weight to the palms of his hands, raising his skull. His back arched and his vertebrae popped back in place as condensed golden chakra did its job with an urgency that could be felt in the air.

In those two clans were some of the foulest humans that the Bijuu ever had the displeasure of sensing. Were they not the last remnants of the mythical man he had considered his father, he would have wiped them out long ago.

But now... Madara stood before him. Those damnable crimson eyes whirled like they had so often before.

The chakra finally settled around his form, giving his being a golden embrace, and the Kyūbi blurred into action. One second, he was lying disoriented on the ground, and the next his human fist was colliding into Madara's face with a satisfying crunch. Revenge was ever so sweet.

He stood there with his fist still outstretched as he watched Madara's form blast away from the force of his blow. The giant fox smirked, drinking in what had to be the most beautiful sight in the world as Madara Uchiha plowed through a rocky ground with speeds that would tear most men apart. He was enjoying this way too much.

"MADARA-NII!"

Kurama flinched at the panicked scream that sounded off right next to him. He had been so focused on correctly maneuvering Naruto's body and on destroying Madara that he'd made the rookie mistake of not paying attention to his surroundings.

He whipped his head towards the noise even as Naruto's body slipped into a defensive crouch on instinct. Kurama was rather impressed—the brat had trained so hard that it wasn't even necessary for him to have complete control over Naruto's body! The Uchiha that stood before him wasn't even paying attention to him. Rather, he was staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the tumbling form of that bastard Madara.

Kurama watched in fascination as the Uchiha's Sharingan captured every detail of the great Uchiha Madara being thrown across the landscape. A tear fell down his cheek. Kurama snorted; he hadn't seen Naruto's fight, but this one didn't seem worth his time. The Nine-Tails then stretched, inducing a series of satisfying pops in his joints.

**"I've been wanting to do that for _such_ a long time."** Oh, good. He'd been able to keep his voice. Kurama didn't particularly like the high-pitched squeak that humans seemed to possess.

The Uchiha stiffened, fists clenching and shoulders trembling violently.

**"And I'm not even done yet. You know, for all the time I've wanted to kill Madara, I've never put much thought into how... Should I rip out his guts? Grind his bones? Drink his blood?"**

All the while, the Uchiha stood locked in place, his eyes red from more than just the Sharingan and his body shaking with fury.

Kurama frowned; this was no fun. He only enjoyed himself if his prey actually responded. Sighing, he turned back to Madara. That man, Kurama would enjoy destroying no matter what. The world blurred around him as once again, Naruto's instinct took over. Kurama vanished in a yellow flash and reappeared next to where Madara had finally rolled to a stop in the burnt rocky ground.

Absently, he flexed Naruto's fingers, opening and closing his right fist. It appeared that while in control of Naruto's body, he had access to the majority of the blond's skill. However, Kurama didn't know how to access any of it yet. So far, it had just... _happened_, obeying his will without conscious thought.

The taijutsu stance felt natural, as it should have for any shinobi, but Kurama wasn't sure how he had managed to use the Hiraishin. From what he had seen, even Naruto when he was fully conscious had to concentrate immensely to use that technique. Perhaps it was because even as incapacitated as Naruto was, he kept on fighting, never once giving up, never backing down.

It was times like this that made Kurama truly respect the brat.

At his feet, Madara suddenly gasped, greedily sucking in large mouthfuls of air. Kurama quirked an eyebrow, or at least tried, because he ended up wrinkling his nose instead. It seemed that his control over his partner's body wasn't as complete as he'd have liked to believe. As it was, Madara didn't seem as though he was in any condition to fight. He would be like putty in Kurama's hands, easily manipulated and incredibly weak.

Then his vision filled with a brilliant sapphire-blue as the world careened around him. There was a sharp pain in his stomach and it felt like one of the stakes of his damnable old seal was impaling him once more. Looking down his torso, Kurama saw a giant blue sword piercing through the protective golden chakra-cloak and into his stomach.

The pain was agonizing, hacking through his nerves and paralyzing his limbs with with excruciating efficiency. Barely able to follow the blade with his eyes, the Bijuu eventually saw the one and only Uchiha Madara, badly injured with a swollen face, fractured ribs and a bloody mouth, standing over him in victory.

The Susano'o stood guard over Madara once more, pupil-less alien eyes staring into Kurama's soul. The Bijuu decided then that if there was one thing in the world that he absolutely despised, it was the Sharingan. Growling, the Kyuubi flared his chakra and and shook off the crippling pain. If Naruto could get up from something like this, then like hell he couldn't!

As he completed the thought, powerful claws of potent golden power reached out of Naruto's body and shoved the Susano'o's sword away after a careful extraction. Madara glared through a coughing fit as Kurama once again healed his container's body. It was then that he noticed his power was a bit harder to call upon than before.

Damn... He'd been taking too much time. Now he only had two minutes before he lost control again. Nonetheless, he grinned. That was plenty of time!

**"You... did you really think something like this was enough to stop me?"**

Madara stared in undisguised horror. "What manner of hell-spawn could possibly survive that?" He paused as he coughed out a globulous red fluid. He looked up, his warped Sharingan whirling at a furious rate, so fast that the black designs blurred to form a series of concentric circles, alternating between red, black, and red again. "What kind of monster are you?" He said the word monster like it shouldn't exist.

Kurama couldn't help but chuckle at that, purring with satisfaction as the last of the injuries to Naruto's body steamed and closed as though they never were. Making sure that Madara was watching him from his position six meters away, Kurama forced as much chakra as he dared into Naruto's body, confident that his jinchuuriki could handle the strain. The very air trembled at the magnitude.

Madara's Sharingan eyes bulged as he gasped and fell to his knees. The blue-hued Susano'o, however, remained unaffected.

**"What kind of monster am I?"** Kurama chuckled again, but his eyes turned crimson and slitted as he finally got the right amount of chakra through his partner's body. Suddenly, everything looked clearer, every smell sharper. He could feel nails hardening into claws and canines bulging familiarly in his mouth and all of a sudden, Madara looked far more afraid. The fox loved every second of it.

**"I'm the strongest!"**

With a roar, he slammed a chakra-laden fist into the four-armed Susano'o, staggering it with the power of his blow. Madara looked up in a panic, his eyes leaking liquid scarlet trails. He appeared to be losing his large vernacular in the heat of battle. "What the hell are you?!"

Kurama laughed as he dodged a swing of the Susano'o's sword, ignoring the question. He didn't put it past the blasted Uchiha to try to catch him off guard with a rhetorical question. Madara knew _exactly_ who he was. That is, until he got a closer look at those accursed eyes. He froze and it almost cost him everything. As the Bijuu narrowly avoided another swipe, only one thought was on his mind;

**_'His eyes...'_ **He ducked under a swing as the colossal blade barely missed his form. Kurama moved in closer to his larger foe, obeying the instincts still present in his container's body. Years of fighting life-and-death battles were beaten into his muscles, engraved in his bones. Naruto's body knew what to do—Kurama just had to let it all flow in harmony.

_**'They're different...'**_

The Susano'o swung heavily with the sword in one of its left hands while simultaneously bringing the blade in its right hand down like a hammer of god. Kurama ducked under the left-handed swing, feeling the edge of the blade graze against his chakra-cloaked skin without breaking it, but he panicked when he saw the second sword. It approached with the finesse of a meteor, blasting away the air in front of it as it neared.

**"Che!"**

Kurama threw his body forward, crashing into the sapphire giant himself as the ground behind him was decimated with the punishing force of the blow. The air filled with all manner of dust and debris as the ground split under the force of the ethereal blue sword. Immediately, he peeled himself off and backpedalled to what he deemed to be a safe distance away.

As he struggled to put distance between him and his opponent, the Susano'o slashed wildly at his golden form. As he fought, Kurama lamented the fact that he could not use his own body for the fight, for it was far harder to try to do battle in Naruto's. Nonetheless, the fox avoided the otherworldly blade with a desperation. One slash of that and he'd go from one Bijuu to two Bijuu pieces. He didn't like the idea.

Kurama rolled to his left as the gigantic sapphire sword shattered the ground where he had been less than a second earlier. The earth groaned as dust spewed into the air, temporarily shrouding the area.

As the Tailed-Beast dodged yet another swipe, Madara let out a frustrated yell and redoubled his efforts, causing his eyes to bleed even more. The Susano'o flickered for a moment, then in addition to the armor it already wore, it donned a hooded grey cloak with a ceremonial mask of sorts, causing alien eyes to gleam from under the darkness. Madara's breathing was ragged and raw as he struggled to stay upright. Kurama took the opportunity to retreat and try to come up with some kind of a strategy. As he was, he couldn't just power his way through Madara. He leaped backwards by a good fifty yards, his golden chakra augmenting Naruto's physical capabilities greatly.

All of a sudden, the Tailed-Beast felt an almost imperceptible shift in the air as the hairs on his neck stood on end. He spun around, only to find that other Uchiha, the one he'd deemed not worth his time standing right behind him, glaring at him like the look alone would do him in. After a moment of tense silence, Kurama snorted.

**"I think you're lost, little Uchiha."** The man didn't so much as flinch at the earth-shaking voice. The only thing he did was stare. And stare.

There was a pulse, and the Uchiha's Sharingan stretched violently. Kurama cursed not having watched Naruto's battle earlier. He had known that Naruto had been badly burnt, and he knew that his partner was fighting Madara: but beyond that, he was in the dark. _This_ was how Naruto had almost gotten killed.

Mangekyō... Even though he had never seen this one that looked like three thick black stripes connecting to a black circle which surrounded a red pupil, it still looked familiar. Then it dawned on the Bijuu.

**_'If you put this one with Madara's... Damn it Naruto, what happened? What has Obito done__?'_**

Deciding that it didn't particularly matter at the moment how splitting of an Eternal Mangekyō had occurred, Kurama decided to eliminate the threat before him.

The entire thought process took less than two seconds. He was awesome like that.

Holding out his hand, he condensed positive and negative chakra in a careful ratio of 8:2. Golden hands sprouted out of his chakra-cloak and started to add to the mixture, until a dark purple ball formed. It was fortunate that Naruto was so used to making that Rasengan of his, because it allowed the chakra to flow more smoothly for what Kurama was attempting.

A Bijuu-Dama.

The ball of explosive chakra hovered over his right hand, being tended to by two golden chakra-hands that had sprouted out of the cloak. It grew by the second, having started out as not much smaller than a coin, but now fast outstripping Naruto's head. It was more than enough for any Uchiha. He could smell the fear of Madara and feel the terror of the Uchiha frozen in front of him. Kurama smirked.

And then, disaster struck.

The Tailed-Beast-Bomb, which had been growing just fine until then, froze and shattered, revealing a dull rocky interior. Kurama felt his power rapidly retreating to the depths of Naruto's body, in a place where he couldn't use it to fight the Uchiha.

**_'No! I'm running out of time!'_**

Now in a full-blown panic, the ninth Tailed-Beast leveled one last glare at Uchiha Madara, just as he felt the weirdest sensation. It was like... he was being _pulled._ There was no other word for it. It was like he was being forced out of existence. He looked down to his belly only to see a crazy distortion in the air, along with the beginnings of a sphere of the purest black.

Shit. That was what the other Uchiha had been trying to do. Black flames and now this?! Damn Sharingan...

The real concern appeared when Kurama found it difficult to move. _**'What the—!'**_Then impossible to move. **_'NO!'_ **He struggled like the beast he really was, snarling and flashing fangs that were far longer than they should have been, his red eyes glowing with a strange light.

"Something wrong?" It was that other Uchiha, the one who had a part of Madara's Mangekyō. His voice... he sounded so cold that it gave him chills. "No one escapes the Kamui. Disappear in my Divine Judgement." The Kamui. The fucking Kamui.

Kurama snarled, putting up a brave front. He was running out of time and he knew it. He was running on barely a minute, and he didn't have enough time to charge another Tailed-Beast-Bomb. He knew that fate was closing its deadly claws around his being, since the Kamui was starting to tug painfully at his stomach. This was nowhere near as fast or efficient as when that brat Kakashi used it though, so Kurama counted himself lucky.

**"Do you really think this will stop me?" **The Uchiha remained unaffected, steadily widening the dimensional tear that threatened to suck Kurama into the void. He ignored how the veins of his eyes bulged and how tears of blood leaked down his cheeks from the strain.

Kurama growled. At this rate...

Then he saw something that renewed his hope, rekindled his will to survive, his desire to dominate in the heat of battle. A chance for victory was in sight, small, but a chance nonetheless.

**"Madara looks like hell,"** Kurama remarked with an undeniable glee evident in his voice.

Unbelievably, that actually worked as a distraction. The Uchiha looked over Kurama's shoulder to where Madara had fallen to his knees, Susano'o long since dissipated. A pool of blood was rapidly forming underneath him. It looked like he could only use the otherworldly warrior with the Eternal Mangekyō after all. Without it, the Warrior God crushed his body and spirit like it was nothing. The power was just too taxing.

"Madara-nii!" The pressure that immobilized Kurama lessened for an instant, almost imperceptibly. It was enough. The Tailed-Beast burst into action, taking one of the few options available to him before he could be captured again.

**BAM!**

Kurama rammed his forehead against that of the Uchiha's, the metal of Naruto's hitai-ate inducing what would no doubt be a mild concussion.

The pressure vanished and reality returned to its normal state as the Uchiha lost focus. Kurama shifted, testing his range of motion even as the unknown Uchiha fell over in a disoriented heap, blood cascading down his forehead, bleeding profusely as head-wounds usually do. Kurama stared at the injured man's dulled eyes for a moment. Perhaps he'd hit too hard... No, he didn't mind if he killed an Uchiha.

Then, the Bijuu felt the last of his power slowly starting to retreat, stripping him of his strength. If only he had more time...

Not wasting a moment to think on why the Uchiha before him had called Madara his brother, Kurama used Naruto's body to its fullest potential and vanished in a golden flash, leaving two bitter and bloodied siblings in his wake.

* * *

~o0O0o~

**_Author's Note:_**_ I feel rather dissatisfied with the fight scene, enough that I might actually go back and edit a lot of it. Anyway, I tried my best to keep anyone relatively in character. Let me know if you don't think I did my job on that aspect._

_As for Hikari and Masaru, I really enjoyed writing their characters, just 'cause I like annoying the crap out of Sasuke. I don't know why..._

_Also, the reason that this story even exists is because of two people: _Hmm_, the one who brought to my attention that _The Clan Wars_ could have been better, and _Infamous Storm_, my friend and fellow author (who happens to be much better than I am) who encouraged m to write a new version of my first story._

_The reason I bring this up is because I'm recommending _Infamous'_ story to all of you. It's called _'A Different Legend'_ and it's... actually a bit hard to explain without giving away the plot. Well, the humor is outstanding, the action is breathtaking, and the conversations are actually written like real conversations. It even has a plot! Here's the summary:_

Naruto is literally one of the most talented shinobi to have ever graced the ninja world in the past five hundred years, yet he uses his brilliance to get out of work rather than do it himself. Too bad having a fox in your gut complicates things... AU. Pairings in the works. I own nothing.

_I promise you, it is totally worth the read. However, if any of you have specifics on what you like to read, just withhold your judgement until at least chapter thirteen._

_Above all, I would like to thank my beta _sendicard_ for his tremendous amount of help. Seriously, I don't know how I'd navigate the raging sea of typos and grammar fallacies without his guidance._


End file.
